Amid smoke bombs and flying eggs hurled by enraged opposition deputies, the session hall ministers look on in the background during ratification of the Black Sea Fleet deal with Russia, in Ukraine's parliament in Kiev, Tuesday.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP

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Amid smoke bombs and flying eggs hurled by enraged opposition deputies, Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday controversially agreed to extend the Russian Navy's lease on the Crimean port of Sevastopol for 25 years in exchange for billions of dollars worth of discounted Russian gas.

"Today will go down as a black page in the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian parliament," said Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was narrowly defeated by pro-MoscowViktor Yanukovich for the presidency in February polls.

Opposition leaders say it effectively maintains the Black Sea as a Russian-dominated lake, and compels Ukraine to involuntarily back Moscow's military actions such as the Russian Navy's blockade of Georgia during the brief 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.

Experts say that Ukraine has been rapidly realigning itself away from the West and toward Moscow since the electoral triumph of Mr. Yanukovich, who heads the eastern Ukraine-based Party of Regions.

Yanukovich and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have met five times since the February elections, including a meeting in Kharkov last week where the Ukrainian leader signed the naval accord in return for a 30 percent discount, worth about $40 billion over the next decade, in the price of Russian natural gas – upon which Ukraine's foundering economy is deeply dependent.

Pragmatic

"Ukrainian politicians today have to be tough pragmatists," says Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the independent Center for Political and Conflict Studies in Kiev. "Half of our trade turnover is with Russia, and we just can't afford to be in a state of conflict with them. It's a practical and unsentimental deal."

Some analysts say Yanukovich may be ready to embrace a sweeping restoration of Soviet-era economic ties, including a customs union and joint industrial strategy, between Russia and Ukraine that has been long advocated by Moscow.

The 2004 Orange Revolution interrupted those plans. The peaceful street revolt overturned an election allegedly rigged by Yanukovich and brought pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power pledging to put Ukraine on a fast-track to NATO membership and integration with the European Union.

"We have just formulated an offer which we would like to discuss,” Mr. Putin said in a meeting with Yanukovich. "At issue is large-scale cooperation between our nuclear sectors. We are offering to establish a major holding, which would unite our generation, nuclear engineering, and nuclear fuel cycles.... If Ukrainian specialists find this to be too revolutionary, then we could act in phases."

Nuclear cooperation?

Russia has heavily invested in an expansion of its own nuclear power industry, and a union with Ukraine, which operates four atomic power stations with 15 Soviet-built reactors, would be a big boost to those plans.

It would also nail down Ukraine as a captive market for Russian energy companies for decades. Still reeling under the radioactive legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine had been moving to wean itself completely from nuclear power.

"I don't see any reason to get upset if Russia and Ukraine are moving to restore some economic synergies," says Dmytro Vydrin, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, a key presidential advisory body. "The opposition thinks Russia is the source of all dangers and any cooperation with it is some kind of sell-out. But economic cooperation isn't a threat to our sovereignty, and it can be very beneficial."

"Over 60 percent of Ukrainians in recent polls supported the idea of joining the Russia-Belarus Union," which is a common market and partial political union, he says. "As for extending the Russian Black Sea Fleet's lease in Crimea, 63 percent say they are in favor," Mr. Paniotto said in a telephone interview from Kiev.

But analysts say Yanukovich is likely to balk at joining a common market with Russia, and even nationalist politicians in Moscow aren't much interested in restoring the former Soviet system with all its waste and unwanted burdens.